Cooking School. Day 6 (Or 7. I'm confused already)

I made two silly mistakes on an exam this morning. Which sucks. It also means that I got an A+ on the exam, which doesn't exactly suck - but is not perfect. I am fixated on perfect.

We made bruschetta, greek salad, and steak tartar. I don't really understand why this is, but I am slower at school than I am at home. I could make tartar, bruschetta, and greek salad at home within two hours in my sleep. But at school it's a hectic rush. Part of it is working as a team I think - co-ordinating the efforts of two people takes longer than just doing it yourself. Learning to work as a team is important, conceptually, but is almost counter productive when you are trying to produce only two plates of food.

(and at home I don't concasse tomatoes for greek salad. Who concasses tomatoes for greek salad? The Greeks sure as hell don't.)

I am a "get the hell out of my kitchen" person at home. That obviously doesn't work at school, and it obviously won't work in a professional kitchen.

It's also a struggle for me to not just bowl my partner over and dictate how things are going to be done. I'm bossy. I admit it. Sometimes it's called "leadership ability" sometimes it's just plain bossiness.

I am afraid to say this in case I jinx myself, but my knife cuts are improving.

Our food tasted pretty good today. Our plating was mediocre. Things got a little hectic at the end, and I'm not sure why - we had a decent checklist and were relatively organized. I need to review the startegy and find what went wrong.

It's Friday, and I'm tired. Hence the non-sequitars and near monotone.

Week 2 is over.